The STREAM 
of PLEASVRE 
A MONTH ON 
THE THAMES 



JOSEPH ami 
ELIZABETH 

ROBINS 
PENNELI 




MACMILMNS-C 




Class 
Book. 









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THE STREAM OF 
PLEASVRE 

being a month 



ON THE 




THAMES 



■^^^iOeuxul 




TheSTREAMofPLEA- 

SVRE. A NARRATIVE 
OF A JOVRNEY ON THE 
THAMES FROM OXFORD 
TO LONDON. By JOSEPH 
and ELIZABETH ROBINS 
PEN NELL togsthsr with a 
Practical Chapter by J. G. Legge 

New York : MACMILLAN & CO. 
1891. 



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COPYRIGHT BY JOSEPH PENNELL, 1891. 

All rights reserved. 










THE STREAM OE PLEASURE. 



I. 

IT was pouring in torrents, on the morning of the ist 
of August, when we drove from "The Mitre" down 
to Salter's boat-house at the appointed hour. Our 
boat, which was brand new and had not yet been launched, 
was not ready, and Salter's men seemed surprised to see us. 
This showed that the weather was even worse than we 
thought it, and the outlook more hopeless. And yet, during 
the couple of hours we waited on the rain-soaked raft, two 
or three other pleasure parties started out in open boats. 
The girls in the stern, wrapped in mackintoshes and 
huddled under umbrellas, and the men at the sculls, their 



6 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

soaked flannels clinging to them, looked so miserably wet 
that we felt for the first time how very superior our boat was. 

It was only a pair-oared skiff, shorter and broader than 
those generally seen on the Thames — "a family boat," 
an old river man called it with contempt ; but then it had 
a green waterproof canvas cover which stretched over 
three iron hoops and converted it for all practical pur- 
poses into a small, a very small, house-boat. By a 
complicated arrangement of strings the canvas could be 
so rolled up and fastened on top as — theoretically — not to 
interfere with our view of the river banks on bright days ; 
or it could be let down to cover the entire boat from 
stern to bow — an umbrella by day, a hotel by night. 

Under it we could camp out without the bother of 
pitching a tent. We had already talked a great deal 
about the beautiful nights upon the river, when we should 
go to bed with the swans and rise up with the larks, and 
cook our breakfast under the willows, and wash our 
dishes and ourselves in quiet clear pools. What if river 
inns were as extortionate and crowded as they are said 
to be ? we should have our own hotel with us wherever 
we went. In the midst of a weak and damp hurrah 
from one ancient boatman, and under a heavy baptism 







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THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 9 

not of champagne, but of rain, the Rover was at last 
pushed off her trestles and with one vigorous shove sent 
clean across the Thames to the raft where we stood 
under umbrellas, while Salter's men at once began to load 
her with kitchen and bedroom furniture. They provided 
us with an ingenious stove with kettles and frying-pans 
fitting into each other like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle, 
a lantern, cups and saucers and plates, knives and forks 
and spoons, a can of alcohol, and, for crowning comfort, 
a mattress large enough for a double bedstead. It filled 
the boat from stern to bow, covering the seats, burying 
the sculls and boat hooks, bulging out through and over 
the rowlocks. It was clear if it went we must stay, and 
so we said, as if we rather liked the prospect of roughing 
it, that we could manage just as well and be just as com- 
fortable if we slept on our rugs ; for we carried all the 
Roman blankets and steamer rugs we possessed, together 
with a lot of less decorative blankets borrowed from our 
landlady in London, and the bundle they made took up 
the place of two people in the boat. The locker was 
stored with our supply of sardines, jam, chocolate, tea, 
sugar, biscuits, towels, and tea-cloths. Our bags were 
stowed away with the kitchen things. And then at last 
we crawled into the long green tunnel. 



io THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

Some one gave us a push. If Salter was looking on 
from his window, he probably regretted his bargain and 
wished he had given us the shabbiest old up-river tub 
in his collection. For in mid-stream the aggressively 
new Rover came to a dead stop, and swung round with 

the wind. I had never steered, J had scarcely ever 

rowed a boat, and between us we had not the least idea 
how to manage it. We thought there was a laugh on 
shore, but we could not see the men who were watching 
us, as the canvas shut us in on all sides leaving but small 
loop holes at bow and stern ; we were sure we heard 
some one saying : 

" If you're going down the Thames in that boat, you'd 
better use the right sculls ! " 

Luckily the river was almost deserted ; even the ferry 
punt had stopped its journeys to and fro, and there was 
only one small racing boat coming up against the current. 
Tom Brown says there is space for three boats to pass 
just here. But it seemed to me there was not too much 
room for one, and to give the racing man a wide berth, I 
sent our boat up the Cherwell, where, through the small 
loop-hole at the bow, I had one charming glimpse of 
Magdalen tower over the meadows. I do not know ex- 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. n 

actly how we got back to the other side of the river, but 
when we found ourselves close to the shores in front of the 
yellow Isis Inn, we made believe we had come there on 

purpose, and J in a business-like way put back the 

canvas a little, and got out his sketch block. From here 
we could again see — I could just manage it by lying 
down full length and peeping out of the opening at the 
stern — the far-famed tower, beautiful even in the greyness. 



X <?• " > < 



Safe under our shelter, we could enjoy all the beauty of 
the grey day — the richness of the masses of wet foliage, 
the softness of the distant trees and fields under their 
veil of rain, the swaying of the tall poplars in the wind ; 
while the patter patter of the rain on our canvas roof 
made an accompaniment to the low roar of the near 
lasher and the rippling of the water against the boat. 
I should have been willing to stay there for the rest of the 




12 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

day. I was nervous about our first lock. The river was 
high after long-continued rains, and for two people who 
knew nothing about boats and could not swim, the Thames 
journey with such a stream running was not promising. 
Already we could hear the noise of the water tumbling 
over the dam. Then we could see the strong current of 
the mill race sweeping in a swift-rushing funnel, ready to 
carry us with it. It looked dangerous, and indeed it is, 
if you get caught in it. Only the day before, a poor 
little boy had been drowned here. Now, we were glad 
to find the lock gates open, so that there was no occasion 

to hang on to the muddy banks. J put his sculls in 

deep, giving strong but uncertain digs, and pulled them 
out with a jerk, mindful of Mr. Bouncer's counsel : 
I cannot call his frantic efforts of those first days 
sculling. But the lock-keeper, as in the time of Tom 
Brown, was equal to the occasion. He came out, 
smoking his pipe with enviable indifference, seized our 
bow with his long boat-hook, and pulled us into the 
lock. The great upper gates were slowly closed, he 
opened the lower sluices, and the water began to fall. At 
this point, we had been warned, comes one of the dangers 
of the river journey. For if you lose control of your boat, 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 13 

it drifts across the lock, as happened to Tom Brown on his 
memorable first row on the river. And even if you keep 
it close to the side of the lock, if bow or stern catch on 
the slippery beams or posts found in some locks, especially 
in old ones, the water, rising or falling, turns you over at 
once. In fact, it is remarkably easy to upset in a lock, 
and as difficult to get out again. 
But then there is absolutely no ■ 
necessity to upset, and that we HBHK ' 
were not drowned shows that 
with ordinary common sense and 
a little bit of prudence all danger 
can be'avoided. 

While the water ran out, the 
lock-keeper came and gave us 
that curious literary production, a 
Thames Lock Ticket. It admits 

you " through, by, or over the lock or weir" for threepence. 
That is, I suppose, you can go through the lock in Christian 
fashion, drown under the weir, push and pull over the roller 
if there is one, or drag your boat round by the shore ; but 
whether you come oiit dead or alive" for any of these privi- 
leges the Thames Conservancy will have its threepence. 




14 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

The minute you get through Iffley Lock, you see to its 
left Iffley Mill. It is only a very old white-washed, 
brown-roofed mill, with a few poplars, and water falling 
white below the weir; but the composition is the loveliest 
you will find between Oxford and London. Every one 
knows it ; it has been photographed, and drawn, and 
word-painted, until it is as associated with the name of 
Oxford as is Magdalen Tower or Folly Bridge, and there 
is no show-place that comes so honestly by its repu- 
tation. We were glad we had walked the day before to 
the little Norman church on the hillside, for now it was 
too wet to take a step on land. But dry under our cover, 
we spent two or three hours drawn up, first among the 
reeds by the tow path, and then under the willows of the 

island opposite, while J worked and I read "Thyrsis" 

and "Taunt," and exhausted our entire library. On the 
other side of the lock were three dripping tents, half a 
dozen wretched men sitting just inside their doors, and at 
this melancholy sight we vowed that, unless every inn on 
the river was crowded, we would not sleep out that night. 

In the late afternoon we paddled down the quiet stretch 
between Iffley and Sandford. At Rose Island a dreary 
boy waited disconsolately with his boat-hook. Further on, 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 15 

a still drearier man in flannels and an eye-glass went 
by in a canoe, skirting the shore safe out of our 
reach. Nothing could be prettier than the Thames 
about here, even in the rain, and it is as simple as 
Daubigny's Oise. Trees in long straight lines cross the 
flat meadowland, the river winds lazily between low 
reedy banks, and large families of ducks come out for 
a swim where willows bend low into the stream. But 
this I really discovered the next 
morning. While we were working *$$_ r , 

our way down to Sandford, I was u^ C jj k.^ ".' ? tJ ' ? *«'\ 

too much taken up with J 's ti ^^^^ r "" ] | ^JBrjr^ 1 

entreaties not to send him over f*H : r 



the lasher, to think of anything 

else. Remembering Tom Brown, I did my best to leave 
all the river between it and our boat. We found that a 
lasher, which we had never quite understood, is merely a 
place above the lock where the overflow of water falls to 
a lower level, but a place not to be trifled with, as the 
monument at Sandford reminds all who need the reminder. 
Sandford itself, from the river, consists of an old church, 
a long, low, gabled inn, a big barn, a mill and a lock. 
When the delightfully picturesque inn came out of the 

2 



16 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

rain, we determined to stay in it even before we knew 
how bright and fresh it was inside. 

Our first day out, we made just three miles ! 

Into the village we did not go. For one moment, as 
we finished our tea, the sun showed itself as if in promise 

of better things. But no sooner had J — started off with 

his camp stool, than it went under the clouds again, and 
the rain fell, and the only change was the gradual deepen- 
ing of the greyness into night. 

The inn was as deserted as the river. Never did a 
journey begin more uneventfully. The rain had spoiled 
her season, the landlady told us ; no one had stayed with 
her for a month ; and we wondered if we should have to 
pay to make up for all who had kept away. 






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II. 

THE unexpected is always happening in English 
weather. We woke in the morning to find the 
sun shining in through the little leaded windows 
of our low-ceillnged room, and with the sun came the 
boats. They kept passing through the lock long before 
we were off for the day. 

And as for our bill, it was so moderate, we made up 
our minds then and there that camping out was a mistake. 
Many of the river-side inns are expensive, it is true ; you 
could camp for one-third the price. But then the inns 
are as comfortable as tents are uncomfortable, and you do 



26 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

not have to do your own household work. It is very 
pretty to talk about washing dishes in quiet pools, but 
when you come to try it, it is another matter — a very 
greasy, disagreeable matter ! Probably in a good season 
inns are so crowded that it is an advantage to be inde- 
pendent of them. But during that very rainy August, 
comparatively few people were on the upper reaches of the 
Thames, and crowded hotels never forced us to sleep under 
odious damp canvas. 

Everything added to the cheerfulness of our second 
morning on the river. Getting through Sandford Lock 
seemed easy now our green cover was reefed up by its 
many strings. And if afterwards it hung between the 
hoops in tantalizing folds, and made an ugly blot in the 
scenery, it served me as an excellent excuse for the 
eccentricities of my steering. The shores that were so 
grey yesterday were now full of colour. Once the long 
stretch of mud banks was passed, purple flowers fell 
with the long grass, to the very river's edge ; the fields 
were starred with white and yellow blossoms ; clumps of 
forget-me-nots were half hidden in the reeds, and water 
lilies floated by. Every tree had a sort of glory round 
it, and seemed cut out of the landscape, and yet all was 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



suffused with that soft shrouding mist you see nowhere 
but in England. 

I hardly know how long it took us to get to Nune- 
ham. The whole morning we loafed by the bank while 




great barges, with gaudily painted sterns, were trailed by 
slow horses against the current, and men for pleasure 
towed their skiffs, lifting the rope high above our green 
top; the sailing boats hurried before the wind, and camp- 
ing parties, with tents piled high in the stern, sculled 



22 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

swiftly past. As we drifted on, the flat pastures gave 
way to woods, and by and by we came to Nuneham, 
the place of the Harcourts, better known the world 
over as the picnicing ground for Oxford parties during 
Commemoration Week. There is a very ugly house 
which fortunately only shows for a minute, and a beautiful 
wooded hill which grows on you as you wind with the 
river towards it, and get nearer and nearer, until you 
reach the pretty cottages at its foot. It happened to be 
Thursday, visitors' day, and pink dresses and white 
flannels filled the woods with colour. We moored our 
boat to the banks opposite the little cottages where a 
peacock was standing in one of the windows, his tail 
spread out to best advantage against the thatch, and when 
two swans floated up and grouped themselves at our 
side for the benefit of a photographer setting up his 
camera by our boat, we felt very much as if we were a 
picture in " Taunt." A big steam-boat, out of all pro- 
portion to the river, with a barge in tow, landed a 
crowd of picnicers on the bridge. The Oxford parties 
object to these common trespassers upon their preserves ; 
but when men and women on the Thames wear light 
flannels and pretty dresses it makes little difference, so 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 25 

far as we are concerned, whether they come from Oxford 
or from the outer world of common men. They are iust 
as picturesque to look at. We even watched with un- 
disturbed equanimity the two or three steam launches that 
puffed by, rocking us on their waves, while we did our 
best to bury or sink the remains of our luncheon. I am 
proud to say our bottles never floated, but were sent to 
the bottom for the benefit of future archaeologists and 
antiquaries. 

All the afternoon we again drifted with the stream, or 
lay for hours among the reeds by the banks, watching the 
boats. In the stillness we could hear the splashing of 
oars, the grinding of rowlocks long before they came in 
sight, far voices, and even the sharpening of a scythe on 
shore. And then a shrill whistle and a train rushing 
across the meadow-land would remind us that this great 
quiet of the Thames is within easy reach of the roar of 
London. 

The afternoon, however, ended in a way that was ex- 
citing enough. Not long after Abingdon spire showed 
itself in the flat landscape, we pulled into Abingdon Lock, 
where there is a fall of several feet. Beyond the lock, 
the channel is narrow and, owing to the deep fall, the 



26 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

stream is swift. It carried us quickly on until, all at once, 
as we watched the growth of the spire and the lovely 
arrangement of the town on the quaint old bridge, we 
were startled by the shouts of men on both banks. We 
looked up to see what was the matter, when crash, we 
went, broadside on, against a stone wall, just here jutting 
out into the river and dividing it suddenly into two 
rapid streams, which pass out of sight under the low 
arches of the bridge. It was well our boat was a broad- 
beamed family tub ; this was the only thing that saved us. 
The men on the banks, who had been rushing about with 
boat-hooks and life-preservers, looked immensely sur- 
prised when, instead of diving into the water after us, all 
they had to do was to seize the boat and hold on hard, 
so as to keep it from rebounding with the blow. It was 
a ticklish business, and the worst of it was we had been 
swept up to the wrong pier, and had to trust ourselves 
again to the current, and come up with another bang at 
the raft of the Nag's Head Hotel, where the proprietor 
and a boy, armed with boat-hooks, anxiously waited our 
violent arrival. 

As there is absolutely nothing about this strong current 
in the many guide books and maps and charts of the 



-%%WR|? 




THE STREAM OF PLEASURE 29 

Thames, we could not have been prepared for what is 
unquestionably one of the few really dangerous places 
on the river. 

Even if we had wished, we could not have thought of 
sleeping in our boat, when the proprietor of the " Nag's 
Head " seemed certain he had saved us from a watery 
grave, and literally dragged us into his inn. We had 
nothing to regret. We left the boat for another very 
old and rambling house, another good little dinner. In- 
stead of being alone, as at Sandford, men in flannels were 
in the coffee room, at the bar, and in the garden. Every 
time we looked out on the river from the inn windows 
or from the bridge, we saw a passing pleasure boat. 




Mir* 




III. 



IN a fault-finding mood, one might complain because 
there is too much in Abingdon to be seen com- 
fortably during the course of a journey clown the 
river. It is the most picturesque little town on the 
Thames, as lovely when you look at it from your boat, 
with its beautiful spire rising above the houses, and its 
old, rambling flower-grown bridge, the red-roofed " Nag's 
Head " and garden in the middle ; as when you wander 
through its gabled streets, coming out now upon the 
market-place and its town hall by Inigo Jones, now upon 
the ruins of the old abbey, survival of the day when 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 31 

blood flowed in streams through the streets of Abing- 
don, and when, darkness covering the land, a red light 
from a burning monastery, was seen from far up and 
down the valley of the Thames. 

St. Helen's Church is the centre of the town's beauty 
as of its charity. On three sides the churchyard is 




shut in by alms-houses, less famous but no less lovely 
than those of Bray. I shall never forget this little peace- 
ful corner as we saw it early in the morning. We 
heard a bell ring, and then down the old timbered 
cloister of the oldest of the three almshouses, grey-haired, 
gowned pensioners tottered to prayers in their tiny hall, 
with the oak panelling on the walls, and the portraits of 



32 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

patrons and benefactors above. And while we lingered, we 
watched them come out again, gossiping as they came, 
stopping to look at the flowers that bloomed around the 
graves, and then passing into the little cloistered rooms, 
or else up the stairs and along the balustraded loggia of 
the newer brick building. The third is entirely distinct 
from these, and of another date, with a gable we should 
call colonial, were it at home, overlooking a little garden 
* .% which is as full of grave- 

ly stones as of flowers. There 
| is a larger garden at the 
il-i^l back of the cloistered rooms, 
- I'J^ftfillili i1"r-{: ^ ".■/'! where little windows open 
L 3^_— -^- ^~'"jg£ out on a wilderness of cab- 
bages and peas and onions 
and gooseberry bushes, with here and there a tall stalk of 
lilies or cluster of roses, or else a low pear-tree laden with 
fruit. One or two weedy paths lead through the wilder- 
ness, and we saw old men in battered silk hats hobbling 
down between their crops. Above, from the high-pitched 
roof, rose the row of tall chimneys, and over all was the 
sweet smell of many flowers. 

Narrow streams, canals with great deep locks opening 




THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 33 

into wide basins, and the river Ock wander all around 
the outskirts of the town, and across them little foot- 
bridges join the streets to the country roads. 

It was not till very late in the day after our arrival 
that we were ready to leave Abingdon. Then our 
first care was to stow away the three hoops and the 
green cover at the bottom of our boat. Our next was 
to find out something about the current from the land- 
lord. He told us there was no use of our attempting to 
go down the back way, and we were nervous about again 
passing, and this time rounding the stone wall. It was in 
anything but a pleasant frame of mind that we started, the 

landlord looking after us with evident uneasiness. J 

pulled slowly, apparently with tremendous effort, up above 
the island, which we cleared so successfully that we ran 
into the opposite mud bank. Here we made believe, as 
we always did when we landed unexpectedly, that we 

had stopped to look at the view and J to smoke a 

pipe. As we pulled off again there came a moment of 
breathless suspense, and then the boat began to gather 
headway. The current here was so strong that earlier in 
the day it had taken all the available loafers of the town 
to pull a steam tug up-stream against it. Now it caught 



34 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

us, and the first thing we knew we were on the other side 
of the bridge. It was only here at Abingdon we met 
with even the suggestion of an accident, so that in the 
simple tale of our voyage no one need look for Haggardian 
descriptions of shipwreck. 

After the bridge it was easy going. By the time we 




had passed Culham Lock we began to take heart again, 
and actually braved the current of a mill-race in order to 
explore a little back-water. For one of the great charms 
of the Thames is the number of these " sedged tributaries," 
which wander far from the main stream through green 
pastures and between lines of willows and sweet flower 
hedges. Often their entrance is so overgrown with reeds 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 35 

and lilies you can scarcely find it, and the boats that pass 
beyond are few in number. Sometimes the back-water 
flows to or from a mill, sometimes it is really the main 
river which is left by the boats for the cut to the lock. 
But the most beautiful are those which seem to tire of 
running with the current, and turn from it to rest where 
lilies blow round long islands, or where cattle graze in 
quiet meadows. 

As we worked slowly in and out of the willows, a man 
on shore glanced at us so hard, we knew he must own 
the water. And sure enough, as soon as we were within 
hearing, "This is private water," he yelled. 

"Oh, thank you!" said J — — , politely, "we shall know 
another time ! " When you are master of the situation 
you can afford to be polite. 

Of course the man who is proprietor of a river bank, 
and fancies the water also is his property, looks upon all 
boating parties as trespassers. River travellers are apt 
to look upon him as a nuisance, and to tell him so, follow- 
ing the advice of the well-known R. A. The wonder is 
the entire Thames from London to Oxford is not placarded 
Private ! 

We landed, while the enemy still glared, and walked 



30 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



the short distance to Sutton Courtney, for of the beauty 
and freedom from tourists of this little village one great 




river authority has written much. We would not advise 
any one to go out of their way to visit it ; its old cottages 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



37 



are in good order for the visitor who is supposed never to 
come. 

As the swift mill-stream carried us back to the river, 
we did our best to bring down a picturesque old stone 
bridge, dashing up against it in fine spirited style. But 
our boat was staunch ; it seemed, these first days, to know 
it must take care of itself and of us into the bargain. 

It was near Clifton Lock, we first saw Wittenham 
Clump, the hill with a group of trees on top, which is 
after this, for many miles, for ever cropping up in the 
most unexpected places, now before you, now behind, 
giving a good idea of the many windings of the river. 
We had come, too, into the region of tall clipped elms, 
which from here to London are one of the most beautiful, 
if familiar, features of the Thames. 





IV. 



THERE was no sleeping in the boat that night, for 
we had appointed a friend or two — the Publisher 
and the Parson — to meet us at the thatched 
house, known as the " Barley Mow," which stands on 
the high road on the other side of the river from Clif- 
ton Hampden. River men often make it their resting- 
place and taste a cup of ale there, for which liquor, as 
well as for substantial lunches and teas and dinners, 
and queer little bedrooms hidden away under the thatch, 
the house is very remarkable. For this there is the 
testimony of many in the Visitors' Book, among others 



'«' : 1M 




THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 41 

of the Lazy Minstrel, and if he be not an authority on 
the Thames, then no man is. The hostess is always, 
with talk running fast as the river, waiting upon hungry 
people, in the little parlour, where one window looks out 
on the high road, and the other on the garden, in August 
full of tall poppies run to seed, and the walls are panelled, 
and the ceiling is so low every new-comer knocks his 
head against its hucje beam. 

We got to Clifton Hampden on Friday evening ; all day 
long on Saturday there was a constant going and coming. 
We never went out on the road between the inn and the 
river that we did not meet a stream of men in flannels 
and bright blazers ; women in blue serges, gay blouses and 
sailor hats, on their way to the " Barley Mow." We never 
went to the landing-place that we did not see launches and 
skiffs and punts (and once the Minnehaha and the Hiawatha, 
two real canoes) either passing by or pulling to the shore 
where the pretty girl was ready with her boat-hook. It 
was strange how even the record-breakers, at other landing- 
places in such a hurry to be off, found time to stop and help 
her, or to watch her as she skilfully punted her way in and 
out of the great mass of boats, put some under the bridge for 
the night, brought out others for the crews about to start. 



42 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

Here all was life and movement, while Clifton Hampden 
itself, where the thatched cottages are scattered along the 
elm-shaded road, and climb to the church high above the 
river, seemed to sleep peacefully day and night. Only the 
schoolhouse, with its large clock-face and loud bell, gave 
signs of life. If you went into the Post Office, where sour 
balls and ink-bottles were the chief stock-in-trade, you 
started a little bell jingling as you opened the door ; but 

it was five minutes or more 
before the postmaster came 
in from the near fields, bring- 
ing the smell of hay with 
him. Fishermen slumbered 
on the river banks, and there 
was always one punt, stationed almost under the shadow of 
the little church, in which on three chairs sat three solemn 
men who never stirred, except when one, still holding fast 
to his line with his left hand, with his right lifted up a great 
brown jug, drank long and deep, and handed it to the next, 
and so it passed to the third. The sun shone, the rain 
fell, the shadows grew longer and longer and the jug lighter 
and lighter, but whenever I passed, there they still sat. 
By evening so many people had come to the " Barley 




THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 43 

Mow " that a dozen or more had to be quartered in the 
village. The Publisher and Parson were put in a delightful 
little cottage, with roses clustering at its door. But we, 
having come first, were given the best chamber — the 
Honeymoon Room, the landlady called it ; and all that 
afternoon she had kept showing it to the boating parties 
who had lunched or taken tea with her. " The lady won't 
mind," I would hear her say as she opened the door. But 
evidently the visitors did, for if I looked up it was only to 
see tall figures in white flannel beating a hasty retreat 
among the poppies. 

When candles were lighted and pipes brought out in the 
little panelled parlour, the profane Parson gave us the legend 
of the place, and thereat the Publisher and a wicked 
Barrister made unseemly sport. For he said that once 
Ruskin, as he stood here by the river with the light of 
sunset falling upon it, and watched the flaming and fading 
of the pools among the rushes, and the water hurrying 
from under the brick arches, saw a little boy run from one 
side of the bridge to the other, and lean far over the parapet 
with eyes fixed upon the current beneath. Of what was he 
thinking, this little boy ? Was it of the hurry of the water, 
of the beauty of the evening, or had this speed and loveli- 



44 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

ness already awakened him to higher and holier thoughts ? 
And as Ruskin wondered, a boat drifted from under the 
arches into the light, and the little boy, leaning still lower, 
spat upon the oarsmen, and dodged quickly and ran away, 
and Ruskin went home a sadder, if a wiser, man. 

All the elm-lined roads and willowed backwaters near 
the (1 Barley Mow " lead to pretty villages ; to Long 
Wittenham, which deserves its adjective, with its one street 
straggling far on either side its old cross ; to Little Witten- 
ham, as worthy of its name, but a group of tiny houses with 
a no less tiny church and lime-scented churchyard just at 
the foot of Wittenham Clump ; and to Dorchester, with its 
huge abbey church, perhaps best worth a visit. But the 
great beauty of Clifton Hampden and the neighbouring 
villages will not let itself be told ; and he will never know 
it who does not feel the charm of peaceful country when the 
sunset burns into the water and the elms are black against 
the glory of the west, and little thatched cottages disappear 
into the darkness of the foliage — the charm of long walks 
through hedged-in lanes as the red fades into the gray 
twilight, and a lone nightingale sings from the hedge, and 
far church bells ring softly across the sleeping meadows. 

We devoted Sunday to the visit to Dorchester, so as to 



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THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 47 

explore the little river Thame, which runs into the Thames 
so modestly and quietly, you might, were you not on the 
look-out, pass it by unnoticed, though, according to the 
poets, it is the bridegroom who here meets and weds the 
fair Isis on her way from the Cotswolds, and thus joining, 
they form the Thamesis, and together How on, through 
London town, into the sea. In the quiet little village to 
which the Thame leads was once the cathedral church of 
the great kingdom of the West, already established in 
the days of the Venerable Bede. The church, rebuilt 
and altered and restored, still stands, bare but beautiful, 
and in Dorchester to-day are not enough people to fill 
it, even were it without rivals. But close by is the little 
chapel with cross on top, the rector of which, rumour 
has it, — and this is the strangest fact of modern Dor- 
chester—is the author of the New Antigone; and while 
we were in the town a large detachment of the Salvation 
Army beat their drums through the quiet streets. Long 
after the boatman, a genuine Cap'en Cuttle, had pushed 
us away with his hook, and we were winding with the Thame 
between the pollards, their rude music came to us over the 
wide pasture land. 

We turned homeward towards Clifton Hampden just at the 



48 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

hour when kettles were boiling in every boat. On the river 
every one makes afternoon tea, just as every one wears 
flannels ; and so, of course, we felt we must make it with the 
rest. We pulled up a little backwater and landed with our 
stove among the willows. The Publisher went to the near 
lock for water, the Parson filled the spirit lamp. The 
trouble was great and the tea was bad, and I mention the 
incident solely because this was the only time during our 
month on the river that the stove was disturbed. From 
that time forward it rested from its labours in the box in 
which Salter had packed it, and for the privilege of carrying 
it with us we afterwards paid in our bill. 



. .. 






v. 



WE left the " Barley Mow " on Monday morning 
under- a grey, threatening sky. But it was 
Bank Holiday, and not even the occasional 
showers could keep the boats at home. Many went by 
decked with water lilies ; tents on shore were gay with 
flags. Those river fiends, the steam launches, were out in 
full force, puffing past and tossing us on their waves, and 
washing the banks on either side. We began to think that 
after all it is rather aggravating to see the angler aroused 
from contemplation, the camper interrupted in his dish 
washing, the idler disturbed in his drifting, and sometimes 



50 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

the artist and his easel upset, all for people who turn their 
backs on the beauty of the river and play " nap " and drink 
beer or champagne, as they might in the nearest public- 
house or club at home. 

The great business of the day with everybody, however, 
was eating and drinking. The thin blue smoke of camp 
fires rose above the reeds. In small boats kettles sang and 
hampers were unpacked. In the launches the cloth was 
never removed. And in these narrow upper reaches, we 
could look across the river into camps and boats and see 
what every man was eating for his dinner. 

After Shillingford, where the arches of the bridge 
framed in the river beyond, and its low island, and the far 
blue hills, and where, near "The Swan," 'Arry and 'Arriet 
were romping, Benson, a few red roofs straggling landward 
from a grey, pinnacled church tower, came in sight, and to 
Benson we walked for lunch. The village is at its best seen 
from a distance ; its church is restored into stupidity ; its 
inns, survivals of coaching days, are less picturesque than 
their associations. 

Our resting-place for the night was Wallingford, a town 
with much history and little to show for it. When we 
pulled ashore it was raining hard, and we went at once to 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 51 

the old gabled " George," where we found a German street 
band and a great crowd, and horses trotting through the 
courtyard, and occasionally trying to make their way into 
the Coffee Room. It was the day of the Galloway Races, 
whatever they may be, and local excitement ran high. 





&.-■ 






The band kept on playing while we ate our tea in com- 
pany with a party of flannelled record-breakers who were 
in fine spirits. They blew their own trumpets almost as 
loud as the cornets outside because they had sculled 
twenty miles since morning. " Not bad for a first day 
out, by Jove, you know !" 



52 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

" Twenty miles," said J — — , not. in the least impressed ; 
" why, we may have come only eight by the map, but it was 
full twenty and a half by the Parson's steering." 

Later, when the landlady came in for orders, they called 
for beer for breakfast, but we asked for jam. "Jam by all 

means," said J ; " we're training to make our four miles 

a day," which was our average. After this they would have 
nothing to do with us, but drank whisky and wrote letters 
at one end of the table, while at the other we studied the 
visitors' book, and learned how T many distinguished people, 
including our polite critic Mr. William Black, had been at 
the " Georee " before us. 




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VI. 



NEXT morning the Parson and the Publisher took 
an early train for London, and we were again a 
crew of two. It is impossible to be the first 
boat out in the morning ; early as we thought we were, 
other travellers had started before us. Already, while 
we loaded our boat, campers were sculling swiftly past 
and under the bridge, and punts were leisurely hugging 
the opposite shore. 

The punt is to the Thames what the gondola is to the 
canals of Venice. But a few years ago Mr. Leslie regretted 
it was not more popular on the upper river. Now, wherever 



56 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

you go, you see the long straight boat with its passengers 
luxuriously outstretched on the cushions in the stern, the 
punter walking from the bow and pushing on his long pole. 
To enjoy his work he must know not only the eddies and 
currents of the stream, but something of the river bed as 
well. For this reason it is not easy to punt in unknown 
waters. Countless as were the punts we saw, I do not 
remember one laden as if for a trip. The heaviest freight 
was a clog, a baby, or a lunch-basket. As often as not a 
girl was poling, and I never ceased wondering how work, 
that looked so easy, could be as difficult to learn as punters 
declare it. But these are the three situations, I am told, 
which the beginner at the pole must brave and conquer 
before he can hope for ease and grace : first, that in which 
he abandons the pole and remains helpless in the punt ; 
secondly, that in which, for reasons he will afterwards 
explain, he leaves the punt and clings to the inextricable 
pole ; and thirdly, that of fearful suspense when he has not 
yet decided whether to cling to the pole or the punt. 

By the shores beyond Wallingford, here and there house- 
boats were moored. The typical Thames house-boat is so 
big and clumsy, with such a retinue of smaller boats, some- 
times even with a kitchen attached, that it is not so easily 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 57 

moved as the big hotels we used to see wandering on wheels 
through the streets of Atlantic City. Indeed, because of 
the trouble of moving, it often remains stationary summer 
after summer. One we caught in the very act of being 
poled down stream ; another we saw just after it had 
finished an enterprising journey ; the rest looked as if 
nothing would tempt them from their moorings. They do 
not add much picturesqueness to the river. A square 
wooden box set on a scow is not and can not be made a 
thing of beauty. At Henley Regatta when the flat top 
becomes gay with flowers and Japanese umbrellas and 
prettily dressed women, colour makes up in a measure for 
ugliness of form. But on many house-boats we passed that 
day from Wallingford, buckets and brooms and life-pre- 
servers were the only visible ornaments. 

As if defiant in their bareness, they were drawn up in the 
least lovely corners of a river on which you must go out of 
your way to escape loveliness. One was just by a railway 
bridge in full view of every passing train ; others were close 
to shadeless shores where the afternoon sun poured hot and 
scorching on their thin wooden walls. 

The inns, by the way, were a pleasant contrast. Nothing 
could be prettier than the little Beetle and Wedge, red and 

4 



58 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

gabled, with a big landing-place almost at the front door ; or 
the Swan at Streatley, with its tiny lawn where the afternoon 
tea-table was set, as in every other riverside garden we had 
passed above and below Cleve Lock. 

It would have been foolish indeed to put up for the night 
under our canvas when in Streatley a whole cottage was at 
our disposal, once we could find it. We rang up the post- 
mistress, whose door was shut while she drank tea like the 

rest of the world. She 
directed us to a little brick 
cottage with jasmine over 
the door where lived a Mrs. 
Tidbury; and Mrs. Tidbury, 
i/f' 2 armed with a key big enough 

to open all Streatley, led 
the way almost to the top of the hilly road, to a cot- 
tage with deep thatched roof and a gable where an 
angel, his golden wings outstretched, his hands folded, 
kept watch. Nisi. Dominus Frustra was the legend, in 
brass-headed nails, on the door which opened from the front 
garden into a low room with great rafters across the ceiling, 
and a huge fireplace, where every morning of our stay we 
saw our bacon broiled and our bread toasted. There were 





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THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 61 

jugs and jars on the carved mantelshelf; volumes of Balzac 
and Tourgueneff, Walt Whitman and George Eliot, Carlyle 
and Thackeray, on the book-shelves ; photographs from 
Florentine pictures on the walls ; brass pots hanging from 
the rafters. A narrow flight of wooden steps led up to a 




bedroom with walls sloping under the thatch. Mrs. Tid- 
bury gave the big key into our keeping ; in the morning I 
bought meat from the butcher in Goring, and coaxed a 
cross old man into selling me green pease and berries from 
his own garden. We were at home, as we were bidden to 



6 2 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



be, by the friend whose pleasure it is to share with others 
those good things which are his worldly portion. 

" And Streatley and Goring are worthy of rhyme," sings 
the Lazy Minstrel, whose lays are the Gospel of the River; 
and of paint too, according to Mr. Leslie. The pretty 




village streets and the old bridge which joins them have 
been done to death ; of Streatley Mill we have had our fill ; 
Goring Church, with the deep red roof and gray Norman 
tower, so beautiful from the river, is almost as familiar in 
modern English art as the solitary cavalier once was in 






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THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 65 

English fiction. The campers, who pitch their tents on the 
reeded islands, are armed with cameras, and on the decks 
of house-boats easels are set up. But 

"When you're here, I'm told that you 
Should mount the Hill and see the view • 
And gaze and wonder, if you'd do 
Its merits most completely." 

It was the hour of sunset when we mounted and looked 
down on the valley, spread out like a map below, the river 
winding through it, a path of light between the open fields, 
a cold, dark shadow under the wooded banks. May the 
Lazy Minstrel another time wait to smoke and weave his 
lazy lay until he has climbed the hill, and then he will 
sing of something besides "The Swan" at Streatley ! 








VII. 



THE day we left Streatley, the hot August sun had 
come at last. It was warm and close in the 
village, warm and fresh on the water. The 
Golden Grasshopper, the famous yellow and white house- 
boat of the last Henley Regatta, had just anchored 
near "The Swan," and its proprietor was tacking up 
awnings and renewing his flower frieze, which sadly 
needed the attention, but he monopolized the energy of 
the river. Boats lay at rest under the railway bridge 
below Streatley and under the trees of Hart's Woods. 
In riverside gardens children practised what Mr. Ashby- 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 67 

Sterry calls " hammockuity . " Anglers dozed in the sun. 
The only living creature who seemed awake was a vulgar 
little boy who, when we passed a sheepwash in a pretty 
backwater and asked him when the sheep were washed, told 
us, " Why when it's toime, of coorse." 

"O, Pangbourn is pleasant in sweet summer time," 

with its old wooden bridge to Whitchurch over the river, 
and the lock with delicate birches 
on its island, and the mill and the 
weir and the gables and red roofs 
and tall elms. In all Thames vil- 
lages the elements of picturesque- 
ness are the same ; in each they 
come together with new beauty. 
We had scarce left Pangbourn before we passed Hard- 
wick House, red, gabled, and Elizabethan, and the more 
impressive because, as a rule, the big private houses on 
the Thames are ugly. And not far beyond was Maple- 
durham Mill, a fair rival to Iffley, and Mapledurham Lock, 
which many people, beside Dick in Mr. Morris' Utopia, 
" think a very pretty place " ; and on the other side of 
the lock Mapledurham House, of whose beauty every one 




68 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



tells you. But you cannot see it from the river, and its 
owner will not let you land. His shores are barricaded by 




the sign " Private " ; there is no inn in the village ; he has 
but lately asked the courts to forbid fishermen to throw their 



THE STREAM OF FLEA SURE. 69 

lines in the Thames, as it flows past his estate ; and the 
only wonder is that he has not hung up a curtain in front of 
the beautiful trees that line his river bank. 

There is an inn, "The Roebuck," just a little below— a 
new red house, tiled and gabled, standing on a hill that 
overlooks the river. But, convenient though it was to the 
beauties of Mapledurham, we did not care to stop in it ; it 
suggested certain hotels we know on the Wissahickon at 
home, or on Coney Island. 

It was about here, in the cool of the evening that the 
anglers awoke. From a punt, where a young lady in 
big hat and green ribbons, and a man in a blue flannel 
jacket, sat side by side under the shade by Mapledurham 
Ferry, we heard a jubilant cry, " O Paul, already!" And 
Paul drew up his line and a man in a near boat paddled 
up to see, and on the hook hung a fish no longer than a 
minnow. And next, an old man, in long black alpaca coat 
and tall hat, waved his hands towards us and bested our 
help. He had a bite, and for half an hour had been trying 
to get his fish out of water. 

" A whale ! " asked J . 

"No, a young shark," answered another elderly man 
dancing round the alpaca coat in excitement. 



70 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

J— — with a scull pushed gently under the line, and the 
old man pulled and pulled and pulled, and at last, up came 
a bunch of weeds ! 

From here to Caversham is the stupid stretch of which 
guide and other books give fair warning. But at the hour 
of sunset the ugliest country is glorified, and nowhere is 
the river really ugly. The "Dictionary of the Thames" 
for 1888 recommended as "snug and unpretentious" the 
White Hart Inn on the left bank by Caversham Bridge. 
Accordingly, to the left bank we drew up, but behold ! we 
found a large hotel, a steam launch bringing in its pas- 
sengers, waiters in dress-coats, a remarkably good supper, 
and a very attentive Signor Bona to add the pleasure of an 
Italian kitchen to the clean comfort of the English inn. 



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VIII. 



HE town of Reading, 

" 'Mong other things so widely known 
For biscuits, seeds, and sauce," 



seldom has a good word said for it by those who write from 
the river point of view. And yet the stream of the Thames 
makes glad the city with its railways and big brick factories 
and tall chimneys, and it becomes, in its own way, as 
picturesque, though not as characteristic of the upper 
Thames, as the little villages and the old deserted market 
towns. It is not, however, the ideal place for a house-boat, 
and for this reason, I suppose, we found two or three 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



within hearing of the ever-passing trains and within sight 
of the chimneys and the smoke. From them, canoes were 
carrying young men and their luggage to the convenient 
station ; in the small boats at their bows young; ladies were 



^mmL .. . .,**$:} 




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lounging ; in the sterns white-capped maids were busy with 
brooms and buckets. 

Even if the much-abused banks, where the river the 
" cleere Kennet overtakes," were unattractive, it is not far 






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THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 75 

to Holme Park and the shady riverside walk, known as 
the Thames Parade, beyond which is Sonning Lock, 

" That's famed 
For roses and for bees, " 

and for the lock-keeper who cared for them until his death 
some three years ago, and whose poem called " Summer 
Recreations " is perhaps the simplest description ever 
written of the journey from Oxford to Windsor. Close 
to the lock is the village, "set on fair and commodious 
ground," with roses and sweet jasmine growing over every 
cottage door. It was at the cheery "White Hart" the 
Lazy Minstrel lunched 

" Off cuts of cold beef and a prime Cheddar cheese 
And a tankard of bitter at Sonning." 

We too might have had our tankard in its pretty garden, 
but there was no room for us ; and so we walked from the 
river through the churchyard to " The Bull," low and 
gabled, running round two sides of a square, with the third 
shut in by the churchyard wall and a row of limes. It 
would be a figure of speech, however, to say we stayed at 
" The Bull," where we ate our meals and paid our bill. 



76 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

But our rooms were in one of the near cottages ; and as 
for the Publisher, when he drove up in a hansom from 
Reading Station, he was given a freehold property all to 
himself. 

It was chance that took us to " The Bull." Now we 



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find from Mr. Black that it was quite the correct place to 
go. For "The White Hart," clown by the riverside, he 
says, is beloved of cockneys, but the artists who know the 
Thames swear by " The Bull." 

We thought Sonning quite the prettiest village we had 
come to, and J and the Publisher and the Parson 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 77 

thought the barmaid quite the nicest. But, to counter- 
balance these attractions, the weather was vile. All 
Sunday drenching mist fell. Books are the last things to 
be looked for in riverside inns ; boating men have some- 
thing better to do than to read. In only one did we find 

I 



• ?■ ,-*"* 




anything in the shape of literature in the coffee-room ; and 
there, a volume of Meditations on Death and Eternity had 
been left for the delectation of people very busy with life 
and the present. In many of the inns there was not even 
a newspaper to be had. If there was one, as at Sonning, 
it was sure to be the Daily Telegraph, just then full of the 



7§ THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

" Is Marriage a Failure ? " question. But somehow time 
did not hang very heavy. As we stood at the door we 
heard the famous church bells, which a century ago carried 
off a two-handled silver cup for the " superior style in 
which they rang ten hundred and eight bob-major," and 
for this we would much sooner have the word of the guide- 
book than hear for ourselves the way really beautiful bells 
can be misused in England. We sat in the church porch 
and listened to the hymns of the congregation. We 
walked to the bridge where men and women watched for 
clear weather, while on the near island campers pathetically 
huddled together under the trees. But just in the hour 
before dark, the mist rose and the clouds rolled away to 
give fair promise for the morrow. 

A gale was blowing, but no rain fell when we pulled — 
for to-day there was no easy drifting — to Wargrave. The 
poplars looked cold and bare, the willows showed all their 

silver, and at Shiplake Lock, as J and the Parson to 

the best of their ability gave the familiar Thames cry of 
" Lock! Lock !" and we waited for the gates to open, the 
wind swung our boat clear round, and it took a deal of 
manoeuvring with the boathook to bring the bow in position 
again. A young man from a near tent ran up to play lock- 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



7') 



keeper — the favourite amusement of campers in the in- 
tervals between eating and cooking — and hardly had we 
passed through when— a certain proof of the beauty of 




Wargrave— we suddenly saw Mr. Alfred Parsons sailing 
home from his work to " The George and Dragon." 

Wargrave bears an air of propriety, as befits the last 
resting-place of the creator of " Sandford and Merton." 
Carriages with liveried footmen roll by on the village 



8o THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

street, upon which new Queen Anne houses open their 
doors. The artistic respectability of " The George and 
Dragon " is vouched for by its painted sign, the not very 
wonderful work of two R.A's. On each side the inn, 
lawns slope down from private houses, and boats lie moored 
along the shore. And, as if to show they are not common 
folk, the boating men of Wargrave go so far as to make 
themselves ugly and wear a little soldier cap stuck on one 
side of their heads. 

But little of the time we gave to Wargrave was spent in 
the village. We explored instead, the 

" Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned," 

and the many near back-waters, with that indifference to 
the sign " Private water " which Mr. Leslie in " Our 
River" recommends. Indeed, no one seems to heed it. I 
have heard men read aloud " Private water," and add at 
once, "Oh, that's all right. Come on!" In Patrick 
Stream, as the only man who ever really painted English 
landscape told us, there are Corots at every step, and what 
more need we say ? In Bolney back-water the trees meet 
above your head, and in the water below, with here and 
there a glimpse beyond the willows of lovely poplars and 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



83 



old farmhouses and " wide meadows which the sunshine 
fills." Reeds and lilies and long trailing water plants in 
places choke the stream, so that sculls are put away for the 
paddle. May and ( sweetbrier, with the bloom all gone now 




in mid-August, trail over the banks. Flowering black- 
berries festoon the bridges, where you must lie low as you 
float under the arch. The stillness is broken only by the 
plashing of your paddle and the twittering of birds ; the 
dragon-fly comes to dream on the water, blue kingfishers 



&4 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

fly from shore to shore, and the water-rat swims across the 
track of your boat. The solitude is seldom disturbed, 
except perhaps by a boy in a dinghy, by the one-armed 
ferryman of Wargrave in a punt coaching a beginner, or by 
a canoe silently stealing along. 

In the quiet of the evening it was pleasant to pull back 
to " The George and Dragon " in time to see the sun sink, 
a ball of fire, below the wide stretch of golden meadowland 

opposite, where villagers 
played cricket after their 
•. ,. .. day's work. 

* BiSy From Wargrave, past the 

^sj^PpJKp ! colony of house-boats within 
easy distance of Shiplake 
Station, at the foot of a shady 
lane, where, if you land, a man suddenly appears and 
claims a penny (for what I hardly know) ; past Bolney 
with its ugly big house and pretty islands where the swans 
rest at noontide ; past the ferry where the Lazy Minstrel 
sat and sang " Hey down derry ! " until the young lady 
came to his rescue ; past Park Place with its grotesque 
boat-house, niched and statued ; through Marsh Lock, at 
whose gates during Regatta week boats crowd and push 






THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



85 



and jostle, just as people do at the pit doors of a popular 
theatre — 'tis a short three-miles' journey to "The Angel" 
at Henley. 





feifcllf 



IX. 



HENLEY seemed quiet by comparison with the 
July day when we came down from London and 
found the river a mass of boats and brilliant 
colours, and the banks crow r ded with people, and Gar- 
gantuan lunches spread at " The Lion " and " The 
Angel " and " The Catherine Wheel." But that was 
during Regatta week, when Englishmen masquerade in 
gay attire and Englishwomen become " symphonies in frills 
and lace," and together picnic in house-boats, launches, 
rowboats, canoes, punts, dinghies, and every kind of boat 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 89 

invented by man. It is true that now and then the course 
is cleared and a race rowed : 

"But if you find a luncheon nigh — 
A mayonnaise, a toothsome pie — 
You'll soon forget about the race." 

But whatever life there was at Henley we saw from 
"The Angel." Across the way was the "finely toned, 
picturesque, sunshiny Lion," where Shenstone wrote his 
famous lines, too often quoted to be quoted again, and 
where the coach starts for Windsor. The pretty bow- 
window of our coffee-room opened upon the river, and 
grey as were the three days, we waited in vain to see 
Henley in sunshine, pleasure parties were always starting 
from the landing-place, boats never stopped passing, swans 
floated by in threes, while boys forever hung over the open 
balustrade of the old grey bridge, where, now and then, we 
could see the long boats on Salter's van as it crept Oxford- 
ward. It is this bridge which is adorned with the heads of 
Isis and Thamesis, whose praise by Sir Horace Walpole 
was a piece of family log-rolling one hundred years or 
more before the expression was invented. 

A strong wind was blowing and there was quite a sea on 



90 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

when, late one afternoon, we pulled away from " The 




Angel," under the bridge, down the Regatta reach, wide 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 91 

and desolate without its July crowds ; by the island with its 
little classic temple and its poplars set against a background 
of low hills — the starting-point of the race ; past many 
houses, among others that of Mr. W. H. Smith, an 
improvement on the usual Thames-side house ; and then, 
like the "countless Thames toilers, now coming, now 
going," we took our pink ticket at Hambledon Lock, 
where there is a red lock-house covered with creepers, 
close to a great weir, and a mill-stream, a white mill, and a 
little village full of yellow gables and big deserted barns, 
with grass growing on their old roofs and weeds choking 
their neglected yards. 

We landed just below the lock, determined to break a 
record. For I fancy never before has any one on the 
Thames journey succeeded in making but nine miles in a 
week ! We put up at a brand-new, very ugly, but com- 
fortable brick " Flower Pot," where there was a landlord 
who had much to say about art and the Royal Academy. 
For Royal Academicians often lunch with him, and Royal 
Academy pictures have been painted under the very 
shadow of his house, as well they might, for all the near 
country was as pretty as the inn was ugly. Elms, the 
loveliest in the whole length and breadth of England, met 



92 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



overhead in the narrow lanes, bordered the fields "with 
poppies all on fire," and shut in the old-fashioned gardens 
full of weary sunflowers waiting to count the steps of the 
sun that would not shine. Here and there through the 




elms we caught a glimpse of the river, and in the distance 
the tower of Medmenham Abbey. 

We dropped down to the Abbey towards noon the next 
day, just as the first picnic party was landing in the near 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



93 



meadows. For this place, where for centuries men worked 
in silence and knew not pleasure ; where later those who 
wore the brown robes obeyed no law but the Fay ce que 
J \mdras carved above their doorway, is now but a popular 
picnicing ground. Even in its degeneracy, however, it is 
true to its traditions. Medmenham monks, of the Cister- 
cian order and of the Hell-Fire Club, were alike in this : 
whatsoever their hands found to do, they did with their 
might ; they were no less great in vice than in virtue. 
And so to-day, those who come there, picnic with all their 
might, and are great in the lunches they spread upon the 
grass and the games of tennis they play on the lawn of the 
big new hotel, where we saw a Gentleman Gipsy's van in 
the shade and a Gentleman Waterman's boat by the shore. 
We, too, have lunched at Medmenham. We had been but 
a few weeks in England then, and I remember how we 
wondered at the energy of the young girls in fresh muslins 
who unpacked the hampers, laid the cloth, and washed the 
dishes ; and how we thought nothing could be prettier than 
the old Abbey turned into a farmhouse, with its cloisters 
and ivy-grown ruined tower. That was four years ago, 
and in the interval we have seen much of England's 
loveliness. Now, we were not so much impressed, though 



94 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



the Abbey makes a pleasant enough picture, with its grey 
ivied arches and red roof and tall chimneys, and the beauti- 
ful trees on either side. Even the tower, if it be but a 
sham ruin, is effective. The Fay ce que Voudras of the 




eighteenth-century Children of Light can still be read above 
the old door, and he who would know how differently men 
can interpret the golden rule of the Monks of Thelema has 
but to turn from Besant and Rice's well-known novel to 
the less famous hundred years' old story of Chrysal. 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 97 

At Lady Place, but little more than a mile below, men 
came together to save their country from the Stuarts. But 
in a boat under a blue sky, drifting past hay-scented 
meadows, sightseeing loses its charm, and it was a relief to 
be told by the lock-keeper that some of the family were 
now at home and so the gates of Lady Place were closed 
against the public. There was nothing to see anyway ; 
just a few tablets stuck in the walls, and a cellar where 
a conspiracy went on once — he couldn't exactly say just 
when. 

" O, Bisham banks are fresh and fair"; and Bisham 
Abbey stands where it cannot be hid from the river, 
and you need not leave your boat to see the old grey 
walls and gables or the weather-worn Norman tower of 
Bisham Church, past which Shelley so often drifted as he 
dreamed his dreams of justice. For by Marlow shores, 
in Bisham Woods, 



" Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, 
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green," 



he, like Lord Lovelace and the knights at Hurley, com 
spired to set men free. 



9« THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

Great Marlow was a disappointment. Only the street 
which leads to the river, where the ferry was of old, 
shows a few picturesque gabled houses. Gravel was 
heaped on the shores, where the girls stand in Fred 
Walker's picture, and instead of the ferry-boat, pleasure 
punts and canoes and skiffs lay beyond. The town was 
poor in Shelley's time. When he was not seeking to 
establish a moral world governed by the law of love, 
Mrs. Shelley tells how he was busy going about from 
cottage to cottage, seeking to lessen the heart-rending 
evils of the people among whom he lived, until in the 
end, he shared part at least of their misery ; a severe 
attack of ophthalmia was the price he paid for his charity. 

Now, Marlow, to the outsider, looks fairly well to do. 
It shares in the prosperity of the river. Launches are 
for ever bringing pleasure parties to " The Anglers " on 
the river bank. As we learned to our cost, that very day 
" The George and Dragon " had provided lunches and 
dinners and teas for " three fifties." One fifty was disport- 
ing itself upon the river to the imminent danger of the 
red-skirted, white-bodiced girls in canoes and the men in 
racing boats. When dinner-time came we found that not 
only the hotel larder, but apparently the town larder also 
had been emptied. 



A 









-te 



ft^«jf^^ 







X. 



IF you wake up early enough in " dear old Marlow 
town " you will see all the men in flannels walking 
riverward you met yesterday in boats, each with a 
towel over his arm. They are on their way " to headers 
take at early dawn." And presently, if it be Sunday 
morning, after the breakfast hour, the procession reforms 
and divides, one half in top hats and conspicuous prayer 
books, the other still in flannels and carrying hampers 
instead of towels. For Sunday is the river day on the 
stretch between Marlow and Maidenhead. 

When we came downstairs in the morning, an Oxford 



ioo THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

friend had just arrived to take a pair of sculls for the 
day, and it was in fine style we made our start. Dickens 
in his "Dictionary of the Thames" advises caution in 
passing Marlow Weir. Though, as a rule, he is as nervous 
as "Taunt" is easy-going, his nervousness here is not 
without reason. The weir, less protected than many, 
stretches to your right as you go towards Marlow Lock, 
and the angler-haunted current by the mill is on your 
left and you must keep straight in the middle, or what 
is the result ? You go over, as so many have already 
gone, and, once over, you never come out again. But 
still, on the Thames, with moderate care there is no 
occasion for accidents so long as daylight lasts, for at 
every weir is the sign " Danger ! " big enough to be 
read long before you come to it. After dark, however, 
even those who know the river best are not safe. 

" And Quarry woods are green " ; and at the foot of 
low hills, yellowing with the late harvest, is Bourne-End, 
a group of red roofs and a long line of poplars ; and next 
Cookham church tower comes in sight. Under its shadow 
Fred Walker lies buried near the river he loved in life. 
W'ithin the church a tablet is set up in his honour in 
the west wall, and a laurel wreath hangs beneath. But 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. lot 

over his grave only a grey stone, like those one sees in all 
English country graveyards, is erected to his memory, and 
that of his mother and brother. 

At the Ferry Hotel at Cookham we unpacked our boat 











and ceased to be travellers, to become, with the many on 
the water, pleasure-seekers of a day. Anglers no longer 
slept on the banks, but were alert to order us out of their 
way if we drew too near. In every house-boat, in every 
steam launch, was a gay party. Along the beautiful stretch 



io2 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

between Marlow and Cookham, beneath the steep wooded 
slopes of Cliefden — where here and there the cedars and 
beeches leave a space to show the great house of the 
Duke of Westminster rising far above, its gray facade in 
fine perspective against the sky — up the near back-waters 
winding between sedge and willow, one to a mill, another 
to a row of eel-butts, the name of the smaller boats was 

legion. Among them was 
every possible kind of row- 
boat, and there were punts, 
aH)fc> some with one some with two 
■^4^T^%SK ife .J~ : * at the pole, dinghies, sail- 
lP '* \ boats, even a gondola and two 

sandolas, and canoes with 
single paddle, canoes with 
double paddles, and one at least with an entire family on 
their knees paddling as if from the wilds of America or 
Africa. On the Thames it seems as if no man were too 
old, no child too young, to take a paddle, a pole, or a scull. 
In one boat you find a grey-haired grandfather, in the next 
a little girl in short frocks and big sun-bonnet. 

The locks were more crowded than usual, and on their 
banks men waited with baskets of fruit and flowers. In 




THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 103 

one we sunk to the bottom to the music of the " Brav' 
General," and the musicians, when there was no escape, let 
down the lock-keeper's boathook with a bag at the end 
for pennies. 

But it was outside Boulter's Lock, on the way back to 
Cookham, that we found the greatest crowd. There was 
such a mass of boats one might have thought all 

" The men who haunt the waters, 

Broad of breast and brown of hue, 
All of Beauty's youngest daughters, 
Perched in punt or crank canoe," 

were waiting to pass through together. But presently the 
lock-keeper called out, " Keep back ! There are a lot of 
boats coming ! " and the lock gates slowly opened and out 
they came, pell-mell, pushing, paddling, poling, steaming, 
and there was great scrambling, and bumping, and meeting 
of friends, and cries of "How are you?" "Come to 
dinner at eight," "Look out where you're going!" and 
brandishing of boathooks, and glaring of eyes, and savage 
shoutings, and frantic handshakings, and scrunching of 
boats, and scratching of paint, and somehow we all made 
our way into the lock as best we could, the lock-keeper 



io 4 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

helping the slower boats with his long boathook and fitting 
all in, until there was not space for one to capsize if it 
would. But indeed in a crowded lock if you cannot 
manage your own boat some one else will manage it for 
you ; and, for that matter, when there is no crowd you 
meet men whose only use of a boathook is to dig it into 
your boat as you are quietly making your way out. Both 
banks were lined with people looking on, for Boulter's 
Lock on Sunday afternoon is one of the sights of the 
Thames. 

When the upper gates opened, there was again pushing 
and scrambling, and it was not until we were out of the 
long cut and under the Cliefden heights that we could pull 
with ease. The boats kept passing long after we had got 
back to Cookham and while we lingered in the hotel 
garden. Almost the last were the sandolas and the 
gondola, and as we watched them, with the white figures 
of the men at the oar outlined against the pale sky and 
bending in slow, rhythmic motion, we understood why 
these boats are so much more picturesque than the punt, 
the action of the gondolier so much finer than that of the 
punter. The entire figure rises above the boat, and there 
is no pause in the rhythm of the motion. In a punt the 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



105 



man at the pole, except in the upper reaches near Oxford, 
stands not above but in the boat ; and fine as is his action 
when he draws the pole from the water and plunges it in 
again, the interval when he pushes on it or walks with it is 




not so graceful. To know the punt at its very best you 
should see it in a race, when the action of the punter 
is as continuous as that of the gondolier. 

Gradually the launches began to hang out their lights, 



106 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

the row of house- boats opposite Cookham Church lighted 
their lamps and Japanese lanterns, making a bright illu- 
mination in one corner, and " when the evening mist 
clothed the riverside with poetry as with a veil," "all 
sensible people " turned their backs upon it and went in 
to dinner. 

After Cookham, there is history enough to be learned 
from the guide-book for those who care for it : scandalous 
as you pass under 

" Cliefden's proud alcove, 
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and of love ; " 

stirring about Maidenhead, where the conspiracy of Hurley 
bore some of its good fruit ; mainly ecclesiastical at Bray, 
where lived the famous Vicar, Simon Aleyn, who never 
faltered in his faith unless the times required it : 

" Whatsoever king shall reign 
Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir." 

He showed his good taste. The village is as charming 
when you first see from the river the long lines of poplars 
and the church tower overlooking a row of eel-butts, as 
when you wander through the streets to the old brick 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



107 



almshouse with the quaintly clipped trees in front and the 
statue of the founder over the door. For the first time in 
our river experience there was not a room to be had in the 
village. At least so the landlady of " The George" on the 
river bank told us, while she struggled with her h's. She 




} \ 



Hi 



i«U' <; I 



4 



M 



advised us to try at the H-h-hind's H-h-head in the village. 
We did, but with no success. Now was the time to unfold 
our canvas and put up in our own hotel. Instead, we 
dropped down-stream in search of an inn where we should 
not have to make our own beds and do our own cooking. 



io8 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



Between Bray and Boveney Locks is the swiftest stream 
in the river, and we saw only one boat being towed, and 
another sculled with apparently hard work up past Monkey 



. . " 



^S 








Island, where the Duke of Marlborough's painted monkeys^ 
which give the island its name, are said still to climb the 
walls of his pleasure house. 

The river flowed in Ions: reaches and curves between 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



109 



shores where there was little to note. But as we passed 
Queen's Island we saw the great grey mass of Windsor 
Castle gradually coming into view on the horizon. We lost 
sight of it when, with a turn of the stream, we came to 
Surly, where the Eton boys end their famous 4th of J une, 
and to little Boveney Church, shut in by a square of trees 
much as a Normandy farm is enclosed. Just before the 
lock the castle was again in front of us, nearer now 




and more massive. But hardly had w T e seen it when it 
went behind the trees. Below the lock dozens of boats 
and many swans with them were on the water ; not the 
crowd we had left at Maidenhead, however. Men sculled 
in stiff hats and shirt-sleeves. Parties were being pulled 
instead of pulling themselves. Soldiers, their little caps 
still stuck on their heads, but their elegance taken off with 
their coats, tumbled about in old tubs : once in the midst 

7 



no THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

of them a crew of eight, spick amd spaa as if for a parade 
and coached by an officer, passed in a long racing-boat. 

The banks, where fishermen sat, grew higher and more 
commonplace ; one or two little back-waters quietly joined 
the main stream. A long railway embankment stretched 
across the plain. The river carried us under a great 
archway, and just before us, Windsor towered, grand and 
impressive, from its hill looking down upon river and town. 
The veil of soft smoke over the roofs at its foot seemed to 
lift it far above them, a symbol of that gulf fixed between 
royalty and the people. 

Rain began to fall as we drew up to a hotel on the 
Eton side, just opposite to where the castle " stands on 
tiptoe to behold the fair and goodly Thames." 

In the town we could forget the river, so seldom did we 
see the river uniform, so often did we meet tourists with 
red Baedekers. In the hotel we could as easily forget the 
town, for here we overlooked the water and the passing- 
boats. Even when it was so dark that we could no longer 
see them, we could hear the whistle of the steam launches, 
the dipping in time of many sculls, and the cries of cox- 
swains. 












XI. 



HE morning we left, Windsor was brilliant with 
sunshine. Keep well to the right is painted in big 
letters on the upper side of the bridge. For facing 
you as you pass through the middle arch is the sharp 
point of land familiarly known as the Cobbler, which 
separates the lock cut from the main stream ; and when the 
river is high the current is strong, and many are the 
unwary whose boats have been dashed against the Cobbler. 
But he looked peaceable enough, a punt stationed just 
in front, as we passed. And now, we could face the 
strongest current without a doubt. 



T 



114 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



Near Romney Lock the red walls and grey chapel 
of Eton came in sight, and when we looked back it 
was to see a corner of Windsor Castle framed by the 
trees that line the narrow cut. Beyond the lock were the 
beautiful Eton playing fields, where crowds meet on the 
4th of June ; and next Datchet and Datchet Mead, where 






■;rm,;: 



r-^^m 




FalstafF was thrown for foul clothes into the river; and 
Windsor Park, where the sun went under the clouds and 
down came the rain in torrents. At the first drop all 
the boats disappeared. The minute before, a girl had 
been poling down-stream at our very side. Now she 
had gone as mysteriously as the Vanishing Lady. We, 
not understanding the trick, kept calmly on our way and 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



i'5 



were none the worse for our wetting. And when the sun 
shone again the boats all reappeared as suddenly. One 
cannot tell in words how the river, with the first bit of 
sunshine, like the Venetian lagoons, becomes filled with 
life. 




At Old Windsor the weir seemed to us much the most 
dangerous we had come to, and the lock by far the most 
dilapidated. After we left the lock we passed the yellow 
bow-windowed " Bells of Ousely," an inn famous I hardly 
know for what, its sign hanging from one of the wide- 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



branching elms that overshadow it ; and Magna Charta 
Island, where the barons claimed the rights which they 
have kept all to themselves ever since, and where two or 
three pleasure parties were picnicing, and a private house 
stands on the spot so sacred to English liberty ; opposite, 
those who to-day are its defenders were playing at making 
a pontoon-bridge, and the field was dotted with red coats 
and white tents. Below, was Runnymede, a broad meadow 

at the foot of a beau- 



tiful hillside, where 
the great fight was 
fought. 

At Bell Weir Lock 
the gates were closed. 
Too many barges 
had crowded in from the lower side, and the last had 
to back out, an operation which took much time and 
more talk. A boat-load of campers pulled up while we 
waited. " Back water, Stroke!" cried the man at the bow, 
who had a glass screwed in one eye. " Easy now ! Bring 
her in ! Look out where you're going!" And with his 
glass fixed upon Stroke, he quite forgot to look out where 
he was going himself, and bang went the bow into a 




THE S TREA At OF PL EA S URE. 1 1 7 

post and over he tumbled into a heap of tents and 
bags at the bottom of the boat. When he got up the 
glass was still there, as it apparently had been for several 
weeks, for we had seen the party going up-stream when we 
were at Sonning. They had probably been to the top of 
the Thames and were on their way back, but they had not 
yet learned to manage a boat. When the gates at last 
opened Stroke saw some young ladies on shore, and at 
once put his pipe in his mouth and his hands into the 
pockets of his blue and black blazer, and struck an attitude, 
and Bow gave orders in vain. The boat swunsj from one 
side of the lock to the other and still he posed. How- 
ever, we had the worst of it in coming out. For in trying 
to clear the waiting barge we ran aground and stuck 
there ignominiously, while all the boats that had been 
behind us in the lock went by. But it was not much work 
to push off again, and almost at once we were in Staines. 

The town is thought to be the rival of Reading in 
ugliness, an eyesore on the Thames. We minded this 
but little, for we spent the evening sitting at a table in 
the garden of " The Pack Horse," watching the never- 
ceasing procession of boats — the punt with the two small 
boys come to meet their father after his day in London ; 



Ii8 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

the racing- punts ; the long, black canoe, either the Minne- 
halia or the Hiawatha (it was too far away to see its 
name) ; the picnic parties coming home with empty 
hampers ; the sail-boats ; the ferry punt, where now and 
then an energetic man in flannels took the pole from the 
ferryman and sent the punt zig-zagging through the water, 
but somehow, and in the course of time, always got to the 
other side. And if an ugly railway bridge crossed the 
river just here, we could look under it to the still busier 
ferry, where the punt, crossing every minute, was so 
crowded with gay dresses and flannels that one might have 
thought all Staines had been for an outing. The sun 
set behind the dense trees on the opposite bank, its light 
shining between their trunks and the dark reflections ; 
moonlight lay on the water, and still we sat there. We 
could understand our landlord when he told us that, though 
he had travelled far and wide, there was no place he cared 
for as he did for Staines. Like his wife and the pile of 
trunks at the head of the stairs, he had an unmistakable 
theatrical look. Later he went into the bar and played 
the violin, and people gathered about the tables while he 
gave now a Czardas, now the last London Music Hall song. 
The evening was the liveliest we spent upon the river. 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 1I9 

A fine Scotch mist fell the next morning;. Of the first 
part of the day's voyage there was not much to remember 
but grey banks, a grey river, and an occasional fishing-punt 
with umbrellas in a row. In our depression we forgot 
when we passed Laleham that the village has become a 
place of pilgrimage. Matthew Arnold lies buried in its 
churchyard, and perhaps he, who hated the parade of 
death, would rather have the traveller pass his grave 
without heeding it than stop to drop a sentimental 
tear. 

At Chertsey the mist rose and our spirits with it. We 
had arrived just in time for the Chertsey Regatta, and 
when presently the sun struggled through the clouds, as if 
by magic the river was crowded with boats. The races 
were not worth seeing. The men sculled in their vests, 
poled in their suspenders. Punts at the start got so 
hopelessly entangled that spectators roared with laughter. 
But there was an attempt to do the thing as at Henley. 
Between the races, canoes and punts and skiffs went up 
and down the racecourse, and the people in the two house- 
boats received their friends and tea was made. Among 
the lookers-on, at least, costumes were correct. 

From the river, Chertsey was so pretty and gay, we 



1 20 THE S TREA M OF PLEA S URE. 

did not go into the town, which Dickens says is dull and 
quiet, even to hunt for the humble nest where Cowley 

" 'Scaped .all the toils that life molest, 
And its superfluous joys,'' 

or the mansion where Fox raised his turnips. 

We neared Shepperton Lock as the sun was going clown. 
Just below, the long straggling village of Weybridge was 
hidden round a corner of the river at the mouth of the 
Wey. Close by another little stream and a canal join 
the Thames, and their waters meet in the weir pool, which 
was a broad sheet of light when we first saw it. At the 
landing-place of "The Lincoln Arms " lay the usual mass 
of boats, but almost all were marked with monograms 
repeated on every scull and paddle, and on the road above 
carriages with liveried footmen waited. 

The little river Wey runs to Guildford and still farther 
through the fair county of Surrey, and on its banks, not far 
from Weybridge, lived the rollicking, frolicking, jolly old 
monks whose legend is said to drive away sentiment as 
suddenly as a north wind scatters sea-fog. But after all, 
if you turned from the Thames to explore every stream 
rich in story and in beauty, you would never get down to 



THE S TREA M OF PLEA S URE. 1 2 3 

London. Besides, on the Wey there are locks every hour 
or less, and at almost all you must be your own lock-keeper 
and carry your tools with you, and there are those who say 
the pleasure is not worth the work. 

From Weybridge to Walton is the neighbourhood 
abounding with memories of olden time, where Mr. Leland 
once went gypsying. There is first Shepperton, with its 
little Gothic church and many anglers, on your left, and 
then Halliford, a quaint old street facing the river, where 
we found the Shuttlecock 
moored to the landing-place. - 

Who but the Lazy Minstrel 
has a right to row or sail, ' 

paddle or pole a Shuttlecock 

on the waters of the Thames ? But an impudent young 
man we had never seen, came down the steps, boarded 
her, and paddled away as placidly as if he had nothing 
to be ashamed of! And next came Cowie Stakes, where 
Caesar is said to have crossed the Thames, pulling 
up ruthlessly the stakes driven in by the Britons — 
"He is the sort of man," Mr. Jerome says, "we 
want round the back-waters now." And then Walton, 
with its relics of days when scolds were called by their 



1 24 THE S TREA M OF PLEA S URE. 

right name, when gallantry was the fashion and astrology a 
profession. For if there is a picture at every turn of the 
Thames, there is a story as well ; and if you are not 
too lazy, you read it in your guide-book and are much 
edified thereby, but you go no further to prove it true. 

The cut to Sunbury Lock, with its unpollarded willows 
and deep reflections, was like a bit of a French canal. At 
the lock there was one of the slides found only in the most 
crowded parts of the river. On these, boats are pulled up 

an inclined plane over rollers, 

/ •,. a and then let down another 

• - TV'""^ • ' . into tne water above or 

below, as the case may be, 

and this in one-fifth of the 

time it takes to go through a lock, nor is there any long 

waiting for water to be let out or in. 

And after Sunbury came Hampton, where a large barge 
with red sail furled showed we were nearing London ; and 
close by Garrick's Villa with its Temple of Shakspere ; and 
on the opposite shore Moulsey Hurst, where the coster- 
mongers' races are run in the month when gorse is in 
bloom, and where I was first introduced by the great Rye 
Leland to Mattie Cooper, the old gipsy, whose name is an 




THE S TREA M OF PLEA S URE. 1 2 5 

authority among scholars. And here the river divides 
into two streams to run round islands, which stretch one 
after another almost to Moulsey, so that as you pass down 
on either side the river seems no wider than it was many 
miles away at Oxford. 

At Moulsey Lock on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday 
you find everything that goes to make a regatta but the 
races. It is the headquarters of that carnival on the river 
which begins with June, is at its height in midsummer, and 
ends only with October. Not even in the July fetes on 
the Grand Canal in Venice is there livelier movement, 
more graceful grouping or brighter colour. There may 
be gayer voices and louder laughter, for the English take 
their pleasure quietly. But I do not believe that men 
in their every-day amusements can show a more beauti- 
ful pageant anywhere. The Venetian fetes can be seen 
only once each summer. But though for that of the 
Thames you must go to Henley Regatta, every week 
Boulter's or Moulsey Lock makes a no less brilliant 
picture. And as Mr. Leland has said, "It is very strange 
to see this tendency of the age to unfold itself in new festi- 
val forms, when those who believe that there can never be 
any poetry or picturing in life but in the past are wailing 
over the banishing of Maypoles and all English sports." 





XII. 



IT was still early Saturday afternoon when we reached 
Moulsey. At once we unloaded our boat and secured 
a room at the Castle Inn, close to the bridge and 
opposite that 

" Structure of majestic frame 
Which from the neighbouring Hampton takes its name." 

The rest of the day and all the next we gave to the river 
between Hampton and the Court. In the lock the water 
never rose nor fell without carrying with it as many boats 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



127 



as could find a place upon its surface. At the slide, where 
there are two rollers for the boats going up and two for 
those coming down, there were always parties embarking 
and disembarking, men in flannels pulling and pushing 




canoes and skiffs. Far along the long cut, boats were 
always waiting for the lock gates to open. And on the 
gates, and on both banks, and above the slide, sat rows of 
lookers-on, as if at a play ; and the beautiful rich green of 
the trees, the white and coloured dresses, the really pretty 



128 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

women and the strong, athletic men, casting gay reflections 
in the water, made a picture ever to be remembered. On 
the road were ragged men and boys, with ropes and horses, 
offering to "tow you up to Sunbury, Shepperton, Wey- 
bridge, Windsor," and still raggeder children chattering 
in Romany and turning somersaults for pennies. If we 
pulled up to Hampton it was to see the broad reach there 
"overspread with shoals of labouring oars," or with a fleet 
of sailing boats tacking from side to side — dangerous, it 
seemed to us, as the much hated steam launches. Below 
the weir were the anglers' punts. And up the little Mole, 
which " digs through earth the Thames to win," the 
luncheon cloth was spread and the tea-kettle sang under 
the willows. But however far we went, when we came 
back to the lock, it was only to find the same crowd, to 
hear the same endless grating of boats over the rollers, 
the same slow paddling out through the gates, the same fall 
of the water over the weir, and above all other sounds, 
the monotonous cries of " Tow you up to Sunbury, Shep- 
perton, Weybridge, Windsor." All the long Sunday 
afternoon the numbers of boats and people never lessened, 
though the scene was ever varying. And when the sun 
sank below Moulsey Hurst, there was still the same crowd 




r r , 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 13 1 

in the lock, there were still the rows of figures sitting on 
the banks ; the men and horses on the road, the stray 
cycler riding towards Thames Ditton — all now, however, 
but so many silhouettes cut out against the strong light. 

Close to Moulsey Lock is Hampton Court, with its 
park and gardens, its galleries and courts, its bad pictures 
and fine tapestries, its fountains and terraces. What good 
American who has been in England does not love this 
most beautiful of English palaces ? But of all those who 
come to it Sunday after Sunday, there is scarcely one 
who knows that within a ten-minutes' walk is another sight 
no less beautiful in its way —very different, but far more 
characteristic of the England of to-day. 





XIII. 

AT Moulsey we felt that our journey had really come 
to an end ; but everybody who does the Thames is 
sure to go as far as the last lock at Teddington, 
and so for Teddington we set out early on Monday morn- 
ing. There is no very fine view of Hampton Court from 
the river. One little corner, crowned with many twisted 
and fluted chimney pots, rises almost from the banks, and 
the wall of the park follows the towpath for a mile or 
more. On our left we passed Thames Ditton, where, in 
the Swan Inn, Theodore Hook, who to an abler bard 
singing of sweet Eden's blissful bowers would " Ditto say 



l Si THE STREAM OE PLEASURE. 

for Ditton," is as often quoted as is Shenstone at " The 
Lion " at Henley ; and Kingston, with its pretty church 
tower, where the great coal barges of the lower Thames 
lay by the banks, and a back-water we explored degenerated 
into a sewer ; and then we were at Teddington with its 
group of tall poplars, where there is a large lock for 
the barges and steam tugs, and a smaller one and a slide 
as well for pleasure boats, and where the familiar smoky 
smell that always lingers over the Thames at Westminster 
or London Bridge greeted us. 

The tide was going out or coming in — it was so low 
we hardly knew which — and now on each side the river 
were mud banks. But it was still early, and we decided 
to pull down and leave our boat at Richmond. After 
Teddington it was ho ! for Twickenham Ferry, and the 
village of eighteenth-century memories. From the river 
we saw the villa where Pope patched up his constitution 
and his grotto, and where to-day the Labouchere family 
patch together gossip and finance and politics and call it 
TrtUJi ; and the mansion where the princes of the house 
of Orleans lived in banishment ; and many other villas 
and cheerful houses and terraced gardens, with their 
associations of wits and courtiers, on either side — all 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



i3§ 



this very delightful, as Fitzgerald wrote in one of his 
letters. And in front of us rose Richmond Hill, where 
Turner painted and many poets have sung, and " The 
Star and Garter" overlooked the Thames's "silver winding 




/' 






$4%l 



fe 



i^s&salf 







way," but not the memory of the "lass" who inspired the 
sweetest of old English songs or even " to call her mine " 
on the C in alt, delayed our steps, for we should be 
bankrupt if we had stopped. 



136 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

In places the shores were as pastoral as in the upper 
narrow reaches, but again we came to the mud banks. 
From every landing-place men cried, " Keep your boat, 
sir ? " — for Salter has agents on the river whose business it 
is to take care of boats left by river travellers until his van 
calls to carry them back to Oxford. Everybody expected 
us to stop ; something of that great noise of London, 
which has been likened to the loom of Time, seemed to 
reach us. We had left the Stream of Pleasure and were 
now on the river that runs through the world of work, as 
the big barges and the steam tugs told us. At Richmond 
we pulled up to shore for the last time, and intrusted the 
Rover, with a good deal of its paint scratched off and 
many honourable scars of long travel and good service, 
to the waiting boatman, and so 

"At length they all to mery London came." 







A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 



THE writer of this chapter is really a modest 
person, and in venturing to give some prac- 
tical hints on boating on the Thames, he thinks 
it just as well to state the fact. The chapter is not, 
however, intended for the members of any Thames 
rowing, sailing, or canoe club, nor for those sensible 
Cockneys whose custom it is, summer by summer, to 
pass a few spare days towing up or drifting down the 
placid reaches of the river. It is meant for the visitors 
to London whose knowledge of the Thames is limited to 
glimpses of it at Westminster and Richmond, or possibly 



138 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

at Windsor and Oxford ; and for the indolent Londoner, 
who knows Hampton Court, perhaps, and the Surbiton 
Waterworks, but has never smoked a pipe on Streatley 
Bridge or in the back-water below Cookham Lock. Its 
object is to show how easily the beauties of which this 
book has treated may be seen by any one who has energy 
enough to catch a fairly early train. The Thames is not 
the least bit coy, and a more innocent siren would be hard 
to discover. If the sage warnings given earlier in these 
pages as to weirs and locks be observed, and never more 
than one person at a time stands upright in the boat, the 
row from Oxford to London is as free from danger as a 
walk from Charing Cross to the Bank. And now to 
business. 



i&-ta4$ 




M- 



BOATS. 

UCH need not be said on this head. Most watermen 
see that you are at least safely boated ; and 
you are not likely, unless you are anxious for it, to 
be planted in a racing-shell which takes months of practice 
to sit. One word of advice may be given. Those who know 
a little, but not enough, about pleasure-boating, are often 
fascinated by what is known as a half-outrigged boat. For 
real comfort, however, they are to be sneezed at ; the broad- 
beamed inrigged boat is everything. The more saucer-like 
the better. As regards oars or sculls, use sculls by all 
means, if you can. In a broad-beamed boat there is no 



Ho THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

doubt you will make better way with them, and find them 
less fatiguing. The advantage of oars is that half-an- 
hour's practice (in a safe " tub," as comfortable boats are 
often called) will enable any reasonably athletic man to jog 
along with enjoyment for half a day. 

In most parties there will probably be at least one who 
can manage sculls ; and for a party the boat is a randan, 
propelled by both oars and sculls, with a stern more or less 
roomy to suit your numbers. The sculler sits on the centre 
thwart, bow and stroke use oars, and the three of them can 
easily row down stream seven passengers, or even more. 

Towing cannot be recommended, unless there is one of 
the party who understands it, or unless you set about it 
very gingerly. Towing appears to one at first sight as 
simple an operation as driving a perambulator. But a first 
attempt may be dangerous, and is certainly as ridiculous as 
a first essay at punting. A boat, when being towed, should 
not be allowed to get far out in the stream ; keep her nose 
only slightly away from the bank you are skirting. Towers 
may be recommended not to gambol at the end of the line, 
and not to upset fishermen. The Thames angler is a 
patient creature, and deserves to be kindly treated. 

Punting is out of the question for a long journey, and 



THE STREAM OE PLEASURE. 



141 



requires not only a good deal of practice, but also local 
knowledge of currents and the river bottom. Once, how- 
ever, you can keep a punt straight, and know your ground, 
there is nothing like it for sheer luxury. As a rule, in a 
punt two are company and three are none. 





<, «l%^ 




For a final word, you may be recommended before 
stepping into your boat to assure yourself, however respect- 
able your boatman, that the most handy instrument for 
dealing with locks — viz., a compound boat-hook and paddle 
— has not been omitted, and that you have not been sup- 



142 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

plied with a cranky old pair ot sculls, worn through at the 
leather and worn away at the button. Such things do 
happen. 

Boating is, on the whole, an inexpensive amusement. 
You should get a boat almost anywhere, for practically the 
whole day, for is. 6d. a head — unless, of course, you do 
not return to your starting-place, but leave the boat to be 
called for. The following table gives in a handy form the 
prices charged for excursions down the river from Oxford : 

Teddington. Eton. Henley. Extra Hire. 

£ s. d. ^ s. i £ s. d. Day. Week. 

Canoe, Whiff, Outrigged Dingey (for one person) i 10 o 150 100 2/6 10/- 

Dingey, Sculling Gig or Skiff, Double Canoe ..200 1 15 o 1 10 o | , , 

Pair-oared Gig, Canadian Canoe 2100 250 200) 

Randan Gig, Thames Skiff .. .. ..300 2 15 o 210 oj , 2( ^_ 

Four-oared Gig, Randan Skiff 3 10 o 300 2 15 o ' 

Eight-oar . . 5 o o 4 10 o 4 o o 7/6 30/- 

Largek Boats :— 

Large Shallop Four-oar 600 500 400 7/6 30/- 

Large Four-oared Gig, with side scats . . 1 

Randan Pleasure Skiff , 4 o o 3 ^5 o 3 10 o 

Pair-oared do. 19ft. to 20ft., with side seats 3 10 o 300 2 15 o I 

Do. do. 16ft. to 18ft., ,, 3 o o 2 15 o 2 10 o ' 

Ditto, fitted with tent cover and mattress ..3150 3100 3 5 °l -k , /_ 

Randan, do. do. . . 5 o o 4 10 o 4 o o • 



These prices include hire of boat for one week, after 
which extra hire is charged. It should be added that 
when a boat is left to be called for, a fee of 2s. 6d. is 
usually charged at the receiving boat-yard. 



«« H¥% tik 



CAMPING. 

CAMPING out on the Thames cannot be honestly 
recommended for any one with a greater sense 
of responsibility than the average undergraduate. 
You may, of course, sleep under canvas without catching 
cold, if you are lucky enough to hit on a dry summer ; but 
no doubt the authors of this book exercised a sound dis- 
cretion when they abandoned their arrangement of hoops 
and awnings to throw themselves into the arms of the 
riverside inn-keepers — harpies less rapacious, perhaps, 
except at Maidenhead, than they are described to be. 
Still, for those who are free from that sobering sense, there 
are few more enjoyable outings than a week or ten days' 

9 



144 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



camping on the river. What freedom from restraint, when 
every man is for the nonce his own cook, kitchen-maid, bed- 
maker, and valet ! What opportunities for the study of 
natural history ! The habits and tastes of the water-rat 




W £1 



7 






f 

M 




and other fearful game are no longer a secret to you. 
And the thing is delightfully easy to contrive. Salter, of 
Oxford, and most of the larger boatmen down-river, will 
supply you at short notice with every requisite, down to a 
neatly-packed hamper of crockery. You may either have 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 145 

a boat equipped with waterproof awning {vide the descrip- 
tion of the Rover, in chapter i.), or you may take a tent. 
The tent is better fun on the whole. 

As for camping-places, they are easily found, though the 
old days of camping at one's own sweet will on any private 
lawn have gone. The simplest plan is to ask a lock-keeper 
where you may pitch your tent. He will often be found 
to have an eligible island at hand ; he will, at any rate, 
direct you to a field where you may take up your quarters. 
A shilling a night is often charged for such accommodation 
— not very extortionate perhaps. The lock-keeper, by- 
the-way, will give you eggs, milk, and butter of a morning, 
or tell you where to get them. 

The following is a list of camping-places which have 
been actually used, though inquiries must still be made 
before pitching, as owners and lock-keepers change : — 
Below Iffley Lock ; at Rose Island; above Sandford Lock; 
below Abingdon ; above Day's Lock ; at Moulsford (leave 
obtained from the " Beetle and Wedge ") ; at Tilehurst ; 
on the island above the bridge at Henley ; above Spade 
Oak Ferry, near Bourne End ; and below the island at 
Penton Hook. Goring and Mapledurham are, or recently 
were, awkward places for camping purposes. 



1 4 6 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



Things are a little less civilized above than below 
Oxford ; but if a party has energy to go camping at all, 
they will probably have a more entertaining time — certainly 
a more exciting one — between Lechlade and Oxford than 
between Oxford and Teddington. It may be added, in 
case the tent should be found to leak, that there are one 
or two snug inns above Oxford absurdly reasonable in 
their charges. 




<l\ 




EXCURSIONS. 



WERE it not for the attractions of Richmond there 
would be comparatively little pleasure-boating 
below Teddington Lock. The tide introduces 
an unpleasant element in the difficulties of watermanship, 
and the banks of mud and gravel at low water offend both 
eyes and nose. And yet it is not so long ago that a person 
thought it natural enough to step into a boat at Chelsea 
for an afternoon or evening paddle. If the proposed lock 
below Richmond be ever built, the crowd of boats between 
Richmond and Teddington will throw Molesey and Maiden- 
head deep into the shade. 



1 48 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

Of the river above locks, and within easy reach of a 
day from London, there may be said to be three zones — 
the first, distinctly suburban, extending from Teddington 
through Kingston, Hampton, and Chertsey to Staines ; 
the second, from Staines through Windsor, Maidenhead, 
Marlow, and Henley to Sonning ; and the third, from 
Sonning to Streatley. The favourite beverage among 
excursionists in the first zone appears to be bottled beer ; 
in the second, particularly above and below Maidenhead, 
champagne bottles may be observed floating in the stream ; 
in the third, honest stone jars of cider or shandygaff are 
felt to be more in accord with the landscape. 

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons the crowd is likely 
to be terrific in the first zone. Unless, therefore, the 
crowd itself be the object of your curiosity, you are not 
recommended to select this zone for your operations. 
The fun at Molesey Lock, a scene possibly busier, and 
certainly noisier, than Boulter's, may be observed with 
greater comfort from the towing-path than from the river. 
That these suburban reaches should be crowded is natural 
enough, but the reasons why the third zone is select as 
compared with the second are three : First, whereas the 
second zone is served both by the Great Western from 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 149 

Paddington and by the South-Western from Waterloo, 
the third zone can only be reached by the Great Western. 
Second, the railway journey in the latter case takes from 
fifteen to twenty minutes longer. Third, the Great 
Western gives you cheap excursion tickets to Windsor, 
Maidenhead, Cookham, Marlow, and Henley, but no 
further. So powerful are these reasons, that but for the 
existence of Reading Streatley, Pangbourne, and Maple- 
durham would be as free from day-trippers as Walling- 
ford. And yet the train service between Paddington and 
Reading is excellent, and between Paddington and Goring 
very fair. 

Here let intending visitors be recommended to take 
their lunch with them in a hamper if they are starting 
for the whole day. Supper in some riverside inn at the 
end of a long journey accords well with the fitness of 
things, but as for lunches at such inns — well, time, temper, 
and digestion are saved by avoiding them. The rooms 
are often crammed, cold beef and mustard pickles seem 
to exhaust the bill of fare, and a good salad, the vision 
of all others conjured up by the landscape, remains a 
dream. But if you do go picnicking, sink or bury your 
empty bottles and refuse. 



150 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 



It may be useful to give the novice two actual instances 
of excursions comfortably to be made within a single day 
from town. 




4 




i&if^-* 




MARLOW TO WINDSOR. 



PERHAPS the best journey for the purposes of mere 
sightseeing is that from Marlow to Windsor. This 
is a good but not severe day's work, and the mere 
mention of the places passed on the itinerary will show its 
interest. You catch an early train at Paddington for 
Marlow, making sure of getting there not later than eleven. 
Arrived at Marlow, you have a stroll of some ten minutes 
to the bridge, above and below which lies a whole flotilla. 
Once afloat, paddle or tow up-stream for half a mile or so 
in order to get a glimpse of Bisham Abbey. Then turn, 
and after passing the weir you will see the lock on your 



154 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

right. You have next a glorious view of the Quarry 
Woods as you swing past them, and, after a stretch of 
flat and somewhat bare meadow-land, you reach Bourne 
End, and then, a mile further on, Cookham. Here you 
should take a stroll through the churchyard, and then 
make your way down the straight cutting which leads to 
the lock. Cookham Lock is one of the gems of the 
river. Not only is it embowered in foliage of its own, 
but it has the whole range of the Cliefden Woods for a 
backing. When a Thames lock is set up on the London 
stage, the first the scene-painter selects is pretty sure to 
be Cookham. It is impossible to see too much of the 
Cliefden Woods, and so, when you have got through 
the lock, turn up to your left and visit the weir. Here 
it may parenthetically be remarked that it is as much 
safer to visit a weir from below than from above as it is 
easier to fall in than to get out of the water. Don't run 
into it, that is all. However, when you have got under 
weigh, drop down-stream for half a mile or so, and turn 
up the back-water to the right. This particular back- 
water is pretty enough in itself, but is especially worth a 
visit for the magnificent view it affords of the Cliefden 
Woods and of the house itself, seen in perspective between 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 155 

two arching elms. If you are wise, you will have brought 
your lunch, and will eat it here. Lunch over, you traverse 
the graceful sweep of Cliefden Reach and come to Boulter's 
Lock. As you will have read earlier in these pages, this 
is on Sunday afternoons a remarkable sight. From the 
variety and the quantity of its traffic it may be called the 
Piccadilly Circus of the Upper Thames. When through the 
lock, or over the rollers, it is well here, as at Cookham, to 
turn up to your left and visit the weir — the back-water 
leading up to it is so good. Boulter's Lock, through 
Maidenhead to Bray, is the next stage. At Bray you 
should visit the Church and the Almshouses, and then 
make your way to the lock. A long stretch of three miles 
takes you past Monkey Island and Surly to Boveney Lock. 
After passing this, Windsor Castle dominates the landscape 
as the Eiffel Tower does Paris, and the full view of it 
bursting upon you as you emerge from the shadow of the 
railway-bridge is majestic enough to crown any day of 
sightseeing-. 

From Windsor you can drop down to Romney Lock, 
following the tow-path where the stream divides, and, 
without passing through the lock, land for a glimpse of 
Eton and the Playing-fields ; or you may pass through the 



156 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

lock, turn up the back-water, and land any of your party 
who care for it to stroll through Eton to the inn at 
Windsor where you have elected to sup. The boat you 
must take back to the boat-yard where you have arranged 
to leave it. After supper you may have time before the 
last train goes to saunter up to the Castle, and to enjoy the 
famous view from its terrace. 




AifcidW-' '" jet ^ 





Xw«Wi^h^ f 



STREATLEY TO CAVERSHAM. 

FOR interest of a general kind the journey which has 
just been sketched is perhaps unrivalled, but there is 
another trip which for pure beauty of river scenery far 
surpasses it. The Thames from Streatley to Tilehurst is 
one uninterrupted stretch of loveliness passing before you 
like a pageant. There are no comparative wastes such 
as those between Marlow and Bourne End, between 
Maidenhead Bridge and Bray, to break the charm. The 
journey is not a long one ; indeed, you can start from 
Streatley, row down to Tilehurst, and get back to Streat- 
ley in time for the last train, or you may go on to Sonning, 



158 THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 

or even Henley. Let us suppose that you are content 
with the single journey, and, preferring wisely to row with 
rather than against the stream, have, instead of getting 
out at Reading, decided to go on to Goring. A train 
leaving Paddington about nine will bring you to Goring 
before eleven. The walk from the station at Goring to 
the bridge which connects Goring with Streatley is a 
pretty one, and the vision of Streatley on the further 
side will probably make you reluctant to step at once 
into your boat. When, however, you do find yourself 
comfortably boated, you should first of all row up-stream 
as far as Cleeve Lock, one of the most wonderful half- 
miles to be found for river " bits." Then turn below 
the mill and make your way back to Goring Lock, and 
on past the glorious chalk hills of Streatley and the 
beech woods above Coombe Lodge to Pangbourne — a 
stretch of four miles or so. The lock, known as Whit- 
church Lock, is here, as often elsewhere, the very focus 
of all that makes for picturesqueness, and you will pro- 
bably be tempted to rest on your oars for some time, both 
above and below it, before you tackle the two miles which 
bring you to Mapledurham. The strong stream below 
the lock carries you all too swiftly over the short mile 



THE STREAM OF PLEASURE. 159 

to Tilehurst. There you pass abruptly from enchanted 
ground into the prosy reach, redeemed only by long 
tangled hedges of brier-rose, which sweeps past Reading. 
At Caversham Bridge, about two miles from " The Roe- 
buck " at Tilehurst, you leave your boat, stroll to Reading 
Station, and so back to town. The day's work is, as has 
been said, a short one, but such a scene as the Thames 
between Cleeve Lock and Tilehurst is not to be hurried 
through. If you take the journey at all, take it in sips, 
not at a gulp. 



k^8^ 






STEAMERS. 

IN conclusion, but 
tell it only in 
Gath, the river 
can be seen from the 
decks of a couple of 
steamboats plying be- 
tween Kingston and 
Oxford thrice a week ! 



3f 



>*er 



[ Uir.vin Brothers, Printers, C/iihvorth and London. 






< 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 889 721 8 



